Healing His Heart

by Sasha Goldie

"I'm here," I crooned, holding him tight. "You're safe. He's gone. John is gone, and you are safe."

  He nodded against my chest. "I killed him."

  "I know. You had to. I'm so proud of you. You're so strong."

  "Corey?"

  "Made it to a gas station. Brady is going to get him now."

  I pulled back enough to look into Tyler's face. "Let these men take care of you. They won't hurt you, and I'll be right here, making sure they do every little thing right, okay?"

  A stretcher rolled into the room. "I don't think I can walk," Tyler whispered.

  "It's okay. We're going to take good care of you." The paramedic smiled kindly at Tyler.

  I moved to the side, keeping my arm around Tyler's back, as he finally opened the sheet and let us see his body.

  Cuts and bruises marred every visible inch of his skin. But his feet made me close my eyes and suck in a deep breath.

  He had some sort of cloth tied around them, but the material was soaked through with blood and bunched up. It looked like it was dried to the skin, too. At least the bleeding had stopped.

  Blisters and cuts covered the bottom. The EMT shined a light on them after cutting off the material as much as they could. "I'm looking to see if there's anything emergent that I need to deal with now, here, before we move you. If not, I'll let the doctor take care of it. Better give it to the experts if possible."

  Tyler nodded, and I inspected along with him. Glass and a few small rocks seemed to be embedded in the soles.

  "If he wasn't dead, I'd kill him myself," I whispered, moving back to Tyler's head and pulling him back into my arms.

  I whispered to him as they put a blood pressure cuff on his arm and took his temperature. "Harry is going to be okay."

  "John said he loved dogs. And said he wouldn't hurt him."

  "He told the truth, I guess. Carson took him to the vet, and he has to stay overnight, but he's safe."

  Tears began to roll down Tyler's face. "I'm so glad it's over."

  They deemed him safe to travel, and I helped them hoist him onto the stretcher. As soon as he was well-covered with a blanket, he tapped my arm. "Let my mom in now."

  I nodded to Morris, standing at the corner of the room. He turned and waved at someone.

  "Finally," Ann shouted. She ran past Morris and flew at Tyler on the stretcher. "Oh, baby, are you okay?" Robert walked in slower, an apprehensive look on his face.

  "I will be, mom. I'm just really sore, and exhausted."

  "They took someone out in a body bag."

  Tyler closed his eyes. "Mom, I promise I'll tell you about it, but not right now, okay?"

  Robert looked down at his son with a tight jaw. "Son."

  Tyler raised his eyebrows. "Dad?"

  "You scared us tonight."

  "Well, if I'd had any choice, I would be asleep in my bed right now." He chuckled. Hearing him laugh, even such a forlorn laugh, was a balm to my anxious heart. We'd get him through this.

  "I'm proud of you, son. You're a strong man."

  Tyler's face crumpled. "Thanks, dad."

  "Okay, folks, we've got to get him to the hospital. Only one can ride with."

  Ann opened her mouth, but Tyler beat her to it. "Patrick. Please."

  I gave his parents an apologetic smile, but inside I was smiling in glee. He picked me.

  27

  Tyler

  Morris stopped my stretcher on the way out the door. "I'll need to speak to you, Tyler, as soon as the doctor gives clearance for you to be questioned."

  Patrick pushed past him. "Now isn't the time," he hissed. "The bad guy is dead, the details can wait."

  Morris nodded, giving Patrick a bemused look. I bet he'd been giving them pure hell while I was gone.

  "That was the longest night of my life," Patrick said as he walked beside my stretcher toward the ambulance.

  "Yours?" I said with a big huff. "Mine, too."

  A police car pulled up right before they loaded me in. Corey jumped out of the back. "Tyler," he cried.

  "I'm okay." I waved at him.

  "We'll meet you at the hospital," Brady said. "Very happy to see you, Tyler."

  I couldn't begin to express how happy I was to see all of them. From the moment the paramedics turned on the lights, all I’d wanted was Patrick and to make sure Corey was okay.

  The ride to the hospital was quiet. The paramedics gave me a shot to dull the pain, and it made me doze. Every time I woke, Patrick was right there beside me, holding my hand.

  In the emergency room, people scurried around me, but the fuss died down when everyone realized though my feet were shredded, and I had a burn on my leg, I wasn't going to drop dead or anything.

  "We're going to have the plastic surgeon take care of your feet." A nurse with big hair and too much makeup had been taking care of me. Patrick stepped out of the room to update my family and she leaned closer. "Don't you worry, sugar. He's taking good care of you. You think I take on just any case?" She shook her head, eyebrows raised. "No, sir. I only take on the most difficult, and you are not a difficult case."

  Smiling, she patted my arm. "You are special to Patrick, though, so you're mine until they take you to a room."

  "Thank you. I appreciate you taking care of me." I tried not to giggle. She obviously thought the world of Patrick. It was nice to see I wasn't the only one. She bustled out of the room, and the room seemed a little bigger without her in it. She had one of those bigger-than-life personalities.

  His big lie really had been just a huge mistake. I'd already decided to forgive him, but as I remembered how desperately I wished for him to come rescue me as I lay on the floor of that cabin, I knew I didn't want to be away from him again.

  When he walked back in the room, I reached out a hand to him. "Thank you," I said.

  He took my hand in both of his and stroked my knuckles with his thumbs. "For what?"

  I winced as his thumb glanced over a small cut. It wasn't deep, but damn, it stung.

  "For taking care of me, again. For coming to get me. Patrick, all I wanted was to see your face. You're what I thought about to get my mind off of what had just happened."

  He closed his eyes and lowered his head, pressing his forehead to my hand. "When I got to your apartment and found it empty..."

  "What happened? Here? While Corey and I were, uh."

  "Kidnapped?" I supplied helpfully.

  "Yeah." He grimaced. "I don't even know how Corey was taken. We didn't take the time to talk about it, just escaped."

  "He's in the lobby with everyone. When you're settled, they can come in and tell you."

  "When do I have to talk to the FBI guy?" he asked, a worried look on his face.

  I was dying to know what all happened, but I wouldn't press him. He obviously had anxiety talking about it. "As soon as you can. He needs to get the details so he can close out the case."

  "Okay."

  The plastic surgeon came in then, and Patrick shook his hand. "Patrick, aren't you up on the cardiac floor?"

  "Yes, sir. This is my boyfriend, Tyler."

  He looked between us. "I think you got the good end of the stick, Patrick."

  Patrick snorted. "I agree."

  "Hold on now," I protested. "I disagree with that."

  "Patrick and I started here on the same day," he said, walking forward and holding out a hand. "We went through orientation together. I'm Dr. Richardson."

  "Nice to meet you." He wasn't being a jerk, then. Just teasing a friend.

  "I'm going to take a look at your feet, if that's okay?" I nodded, and he pulled up the sheet. "Ouch."

  I nodded. The morphine they'd given me in the ambulance was starting to wear off. "Well, the good news is most of these are superficial. I'll get the glass and rocks out, and we'll give it a good cleaning. Then we'll see if we need a stitch or two."

  He gave Patrick a raised eyebrow. "You assisting?"

  "Of course."

  I was a little surprised he'd let him. He was of
f the clock. "Aren't you guys not supposed to work on their loved ones?"

  Dr. Richardson smiled at me as he grabbed a rolling chair and sat at the foot of the bed. "Honestly, I know your feet hurt, and you're going to have some deep tissue bruises. Some have already come up. But most of this could be easily handled by a nurse. And the ER doc could've handled the few stitches you need."

  "So, why are you here?"

  "Patrick asked me to come." He shrugged. "When Patrick calls and says he needs me, I come."

  Wow. Patrick left this level of respect at the hospital, as a CNA, to go to home health. For me. Then got fired. I watched his face as it turned red.

  "Okay, I'm going to numb you up a little." I nodded, and felt small pinpricks along my feet. After a burning sensation that made me suck in a deep breath, my aching feet began to go numb.

  When he was finished numbing, I sighed in relief. The pain was almost entirely gone.

  Without the throbbing from my feet, the sting of the burn on my calf grabbed my attention, as did the general ache all over my body.

  He used an instrument that looked like a glorified tweezer on the bottom of my feet, and soon I heard the small clanks of the rocks and glass being dropped into a metal basin.

  Settling back, I tried to rest and ignore my calf while he worked. I couldn't feel it anyway. A sudden sting made me jerk. "Sorry, that one was deeper. It'll need a stitch."

  I dozed as he finished. "Okay, Tyler, you're all set. Keep them bandaged, and I'm sending a prescription home with you for an antibiotic foot bath. It's complicated, but Patrick knows how to take care of it. It'll keep infection from setting in."

  I nodded. "Thanks."

  He saluted Patrick and walked out. "He looked at your burn, too," Patrick said. "It's not deep, but he put something on it." I realized it wasn't throbbing quite so bad. "We inspected the rest of you, all but your back, and didn't find anything deep enough for stitches. How does your back feel?"

  "Fine." I'd mostly moved forward, so the scratches from branches were on my front.

  "You slept pretty hard. I know you're tired, but let's get the Morris stuff out of the way. Okay?"

  I nodded. "Can you stay with me?"

  "If they let me, absolutely."

  He walked out and returned a short time later with Agent Morris.

  "I'm sorry, but I need you to tell me what happened from start to finish, then I'll ask some questions, then hopefully wrap it up and leave you alone. So you can move on."

  I nodded and thought back to early in the evening. "Looking back, he was probably in the garage for a long time. I didn't even know there was a back door."

  Walking through the evening, when I got to the part with Harry, I had to stop and control my breathing.

  "It's okay," Patrick whispered. "He's fine."

  Nodding, I continued. I made it through our trek through the woods, then had to close my eyes and fight tears when I described him hitting Corey.

  "Corey is okay. As soon as Dr. Richardson left you, I sent him to take a look at Corey's face. He didn't even need stitches. His lip will heal on its own."

  Still, I couldn't get the image of John backhanding Corey out of my mind.

  I recounted the terror of trying to sneak along the tree line and get to the house, then when I got to the part where John basically lunged onto my knife, I stopped several times, collecting my thoughts and wiping away the tears that leaked out of my eyes. "I know it's silly to be upset about killing someone that wanted to kill me, but I can't help it."

  "I can tell you from experience," Agent Morris said sadly. "You don't ever totally get over it. I recommend therapy, and do it soon. You'll one day make peace with it, but it'll always be with you."

  Nodding, I described his death. "Then, I got away from the body. I didn't want to see him. The phone didn't work, and I hurt too badly to go anywhere else. So, I went to the next room and tried to rest, or recover, or something. I'm not totally sure why I just froze there, but before long I heard sirens."

  Agent Morris nodded. "The owners of that cabin pay for a security service. When you broke in, you triggered an alarm. We had an ambulance and officer on its way to you within minutes."

  Closing my eyes, I tried to calm the turmoil inside. "If I could've hidden for a while longer, John would be alive and going to jail."

  "Tyler," Patrick said. "You can't think that way. John sealed his fate. Chances are, when the police showed up, he would've fought. You said he had a gun, right?"

  Nodding, I tried to look at it as rationally as he was, but it wasn't easy. "Yes."

  Agent Morris had me clarify a few things about the location, where we walked, the four-wheeler, John's gun. Questions that wouldn't seem to make a difference, but to him, they did. I answered everything I could remember.

  Patrick walked him out, and I curled over onto my side.

  What felt like a few seconds later, Patrick whispered in my ear. "They're letting you go home."

  "Don't I have to have like scans or something?"

  "Did you hit your head?"

  I thought back to the times I'd fallen. "No, I don't think so."

  "Then, no."

  He brought a wheelchair over. "Let's get you dressed. Your mom and dad went and got clothes for you."

  After he helped me dress, he got the mess out of my hair and combed it. We wheeled into the lobby, where a shocking number of people waited to see me.

  Corey rushed forward with my parents. He let my mom and dad hug me first, bent over the wheelchair since no way in hell I was putting weight on my feet if I could avoid it.

  When they backed away, he moved in. I clutched him tight. "I'm so happy to see you," I said in his ear. "So glad you're safe."

  "I'm the one that's glad," he said as he squeezed me tighter. "When I watched him go into the woods, I took off, running as fast as I could. It took a while to flag someone down, though. After talking to Brady, I found out I got to a payphone about the time you broke into the house. A few minutes later."

  I shook my head, amazed at the timing. If I'd held out longer, I wouldn't have had to kill someone.

  "How did he get you?" I asked.

  Corey hung his head. "I stopped at a stop sign, and he tapped on my window with his gun. I nearly had a heart attack from the sudden tap on my window alone."

  "Why didn't you floor it?"

  He mouthed wordlessly. "I don't know. When I saw the gun, I froze."

  "He's finally agreed to let me buy him a car. If he'd been in a newer car, he would've had his doors automatically locked and might've had a second to recover when John couldn't open the door."

  Corey gave me a half-smile and nodded. "I'm going to let him spoil me."

  I chuckled. "Might as well."

  "Okay, let him say goodbye to everyone else, then I'm getting him home to bed."

  Corey and Brady backed away, and what looked like half the town closed in. I shook Ian’s and Nate's hands, and Daisy gave me a kiss. "I'm heading up to see your Uncle Duke. I'll tell him you said hello." Smiling at her and everyone else, I tried not to get overwhelmed by their attentions. As much as I appreciated them and loved that they had come to support me, I was about touched out.

  Max and Carson stepped forward. "We're going to go get Harry. We'll bring him to you when he's released."

  I opened my mouth to thank them, but Patrick beat me to it. "I'm taking him to my house. Ian's has bad memories, and the apartment above the diner still isn't remodeled from the fire."

  They squeezed my hands and promised to bring me my dog the moment they could.

  We finally broke free of the crowd, and Patrick wheeled me to his car, waiting just outside the door. I didn't know the specifics of how it got there, since he was with me in the ambulance, and I didn't care.

  "Move in with me," I said as I carefully maneuvered from the wheelchair to the car.

  "I was going to ask the same of you."

  "Into your house?"

  "Yep."

 
He shut my door and took the chair inside. When he sat down in the driver's seat and buckled his seatbelt, I looked at him. "Can I bring my dog?"

  He burst out laughing before driving me home.

  28

  Patrick

  Corey's blond hair was a stark contrast to his all-black suit as he walked down the aisle. Carson walked him toward his groom. Brady stood at the front of the hall, Ian beside him, Tyler on his other side.

  Tyler, as Corey's best man, had walked down the aisle ahead of Corey, and waited with the ring. I stood in the second row, behind Corey's parents, and blotted my eyes with my hankie. My gaze kept drifting to the row in front of me, curious why Corey's parents were in attendance, but not walking him down the aisle.

  The service was lovely, as I'd known it would be, with Corey and Tyler planning it. After Corey'd been kidnapped by his ex, he and Brady had amped up their relationship and announced their engagement a week later.

  Tyler and Corey had many late nights planning, since they didn't want a long engagement. Brady and I learned to look for them together, either at the brewery, my kitchen table, or Brady's.

  Neither of us had the slightest desire to help plan a wedding, so we generally banded together to watch TV or a movie while they planned.

  The result was a beautiful and tasteful service. The reception was sure to be equally charming. The chairs filling the hall were covered in a satiny champagne-colored material, and the arch over the grooms was handmade for the service.

  Brady's suit was dark gray, and his groomsmen and Corey's all matched in light gray. Corey's black ensemble stood out better than any white could. The minister wore gray as well, but it was yet a different shade. The entire effect was beautiful.

  I couldn't wait to see the reception room.

  Focusing on the grooms, I realized they were about to recite their vows.

  "Corey, I think your choice of colors for our wedding..." He turned to the crowd. "Yes, I said his choice." The guests laughed. Most of them knew Corey would take over everything. "I think your color choice is perfect, because before you came into my life, it was gray. The world didn't hold any significant color for me before you. You came into my life with a whirlwind of drama, but you've since shown me you're the strongest, kindest man I've ever met. I'm honored to be your husband."